Pedro Sauer

8th Degree Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Coral Belt

Pedro Sauer was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where from an early age, he began training in the martial arts. At age five, he began boxing and later took up judo and taekwondo. At age 15, however, his friend Rickson Gracie, invited him to train jiu-jitsu with his younger brother, Royler, who at the time was only nine years old. The outcome of this experience convinced him that jiu-jitsu was the most effective of all the martial arts, and he began training the very next day.

His training under both Helio and Rickson took place during a time when jiu-jitsu was making its crucial transition as an obscure Brazilian art to a worldwide martial arts phenomenon. Pedro worked towards a double major (Economics and Business Administration) in college, and took post graduation courses at Fundacao Getulio Vargas. He worked in Brazil as a stockbroker for eleven years before deciding to move to the United States and pursue a career teaching jiu-jitsu.

With Rorion Gracie leading the exodus in 1990, Pedro was part of the first generation of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu instructors and fighters that moved to the United States to reveal the art of BJJ to the world. He lived in California with Rickson Gracie and trained daily with the Gracie brothers (Rickson, Rorion, and Royce), their father, Helio Gracie, their cousin, Renzo Gracie and the Machado Brothers, as well as many others. In December of that same year, he moved to Utah where he began pioneering Gracie jiu-jitsu in the American southwest and eventually started the Pedro Sauer Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Association, which is now one of the largest and most respected Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Associations in the world today with well over 100 academies under his guidance.

In 2006 Master Sauer relocated to Northern Virginia to set up the world headquarters for the PSBJJA in Herndon, Virginia.